Judith E > Judith's Quotes

“I am at the moment writing a lengthy indictment against our century. When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip.”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

“Books don't offer real escape, but they can stop a mind scratching itself raw.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“I realized that it was not that I didn’t want to go on without him. I did. It was just that I didn’t know why I wanted to go on”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, Nothing Was the Same

“How could you imagine the complexities of what might come?”
― Michael Farris Smith, Desperation Road

“I suppose one finally learns, after much searching, that we really only belong to ourselves.”
― Colum McCann, Dancer

“Happiness always looks small while you hold it in your hands, but let it go, and you learn at once how big and precious it is.”
― Maxim Gorky, The Lower Depths and Other Plays

“In the end, though, freedom depends upon citizens who are able to make a distinction between what is true and what they want to hear. Authoritarianism arrives not because people say that they want it, but because they lose the ability to distinguish between facts and desires.”
― Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America

“Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunk Christian.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“I'm an occasional drinker, the kind of guy who goes out for a beer and wakes up in Singapore with a full beard.”
― Raymond Chandler, Philip Marlowe's Guide to Life